The Medal of Honor awarded last month to a young Marine who served in Afghanistan has renewed a campaign by combat veterans who accuse the Pentagon of being too stingy with the decoration.

Only 10 service members have been honored with the highest medal for heroism in Iraq or Afghanistan in the last decade, compared to 248 for action in the Vietnam War and 467 in World War II.

In the latest salvo, U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, wrote Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Tuesday asking for a comprehensive review of top medal citations to determine if upgrades to the Medal of Honor are warranted.

More than 2 million troops have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. “There is no shortage of instances where combat personnel have performed remarkable acts of heroism under immense danger and personal risk,” wrote Hunter, a Marine combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Properly recognizing these actions through the awards process is not just important to the individuals involved, but it is also essential to upholding the tradition of the armed forces and inspiring others to step forward.”

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Pentagon officials had no immediate comment Tuesday evening to the criticisms outlined in Hunter’s letter, but said they would respond to the congressman as appropriate. Regarding Medal of Honor awards, “the standards have not changed - they are high, as one would expect for our nation's most prestigious decoration,” said Eileen Lainez, a Defense Department spokeswoman.

Douglas Sterner, a Vietnam War Army veteran who tracks military honors, has also called for a comprehensive review of recipients of the Silver Star and above. Late last month he lobbied the secretary of the Army to reconsider the case of Sgt. 1st Class Alwyn Cashe, a soldier posthumously awarded the Silver Star after he was fatally wounded in Iraq in 2005 pulling six comrades from a burning Humvee.

Douglas Sterner, a military awards historian and curator of the Military Times Hall of Valor database.— courtesy photo

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“There is a systematic failure that may have resulted in heroic soldiers receiving so-called lesser awards that should have been properly recognized with the Medal of Honor,” said Sterner, now the curator of the Military Times’ Hall of Valor database, in a letter to the Army secretary.

Sterner had once defended the Defense Department, saying the number of Medal of Honor recipients in the early years of the current wars was consistent with the Vietnam War. The first was not awarded until five years into that conflict, but the backlog eventually cleared and at least 40 top awards were later upgraded to Medals of Honor, he said.

After a decade of combat in Afghanistan or Iraq, the small number of Medal of Honor recipients is incomprehensible, Sterner said Tuesday.

Giving credit for heroism in combat where credit is due is probably far more important to the average American than to the men or women who might get awards, he said: "The process may not have only deprived a hero of proper due, but a whole generation of the heroes that they can look up to.”

The Medal of Honor awarded on Sept. 15 to Dakota Meyer, the first living Marine to receive the distinction since the Vietnam War, also called attention to another man in the battle whose actions in Afghanistan had gone unrecognized.